Cost of internationalising Kashmir

Nawaz Sharif wasn’t the only Pakistani official to cut a sorry picture in London. Permit me to quote from an editorial that appeared in a — Pakistani — newspaper: “On Wednesday, we had the mortification of watching Foreign Minister Sartaj Aziz fielding questions from a BBC corespondent. He fumbled and failed to convince.His performance can best be described as an exercise in obfuscation. With this abysmal potential in the foreign service, Pakistan was bound to be a loser.”

True, but it wasn’t the Pakistani foreign service that danced into Kargil and then limped out again. That honour goes to the generals and their terrorist pets. But yes, the diplomats made a key error when they persisted in stating that the invaders were “mujahideen” unaided by any Pakistani irregulars.

That was a tacit admission that the Pakistani state is falling apart; how else can several thousand well-armed men operate from their territory? And that was enough to set the alarm bells ringing in every chancellery since the terrorist is the enemy of every lawfully constituted government.

It is this new LoC, the unleashing of the militants, that worries the rest of the world so much. The collective term `mujahideen’ covers 25 different organisations comprised of at least 11 nationalities. (And here I refer only to those who took part in theinvasion of Kargil; there could be more in the camps in Pakistan.)

To digress, this marks a sea change in the attitude of the world. In May 1998, several people tried to present India as a rogue nuclear power in the wake of Pokharan-II. (Our diplomats were just as bad then as those of Pakistan today; the High Commissioner in London simply abdicated!) At the time, Pakistan was given the benefit of the doubt, made out as a nation that had entered the nuclear club only in reaction to India. How much difference just 12 months make! Today, even Pakistan’s oldest, most trusted allies are refusing to swallow Islamabad’s lies, and advising it to withdraw its forces behind the Line of Control.

Possibly the biggest surprise of all was the remarkably cool Chinese reaction. But Beijing is worried about the fall-out of Islamic fundamentalism in Sinkiang-Uygur, a traditionally anti-Chinese, heavily Muslim province. The reaction to evidence of mujahideen meddling was swift and uncompromising — it was announced that aPakistani national had been executed for sedition in Sinkiang-Uygur. This was a deliberate message given that the Chinese don’t publicise executions. Nor was it done to pre-empt exposure by the global media. (Sinkiang-Uygur is as far from Beijing as, say, London from Warsaw.)

Of course, no military aid was forthcoming. The most that China would do was agree to sell Super-Seven fighters — planes that won’t even be manufactured for four years. And much may happen in that time, especially given a bit of news I picked up in London.

The Chinese Army is building up reserves on the Karakoram frontier with Pakistan. This has not been publicised, but such things cannot be hidden from the satellites. We can safely assume that if I got to hear about it, so too have the generals in Islamabad. And it would not please them to know that China considers Pakistan — or at any rate elements in Pakistan — to be a threat to Chinese security.

China is not the only one to make that judgment call. In a significant move,the Egyptian authorities have taken away the direct-call facility. What this means is that anyone who wishes to talk to someone in Pakistan must now put the call through an operator — meaning that it can be traced. Why would one nation take such a precaution against another country?

Finally, France has reconsidered its offer to sell Mirage aircraft and even a submarine to Pakistan. That is a particularly telling blow because the French offer, unlike that of China, was to take place with immediate effect. Now the whole deal is in jeopardy. But that was to be expected given that France had swung along with the tough stance adopted by the other G-8 powers. (And, as noted by Pakistan’s ambassador in Paris, France’s private posture had been even tougher.)

All these powers, and many others, suspect Pakistan because it is now –the — centre of militant activity. In the past 50 years, the post-World War II era, this dubious honour has been shared by many countries. For several decades, it was Cuba that wasseen as the chief disturber of the peace. (At one point, Castro’s soldiers were battling in Angola in Africa!) Today, it is Pakistan which is regarded as the chief exporter of terrorism.

In the past, most nations were quite content to sit it out when India and Pakistan went to war. When some tried to butt in — as the United States did in 1971 — it was generally on Pakistan’s side. This convinced Islamabad that the world would back it if the Kashmir issue could ever be internationalised. Well, I guess that ploy has succeeded to an extent. The nations of the world are indeed coming together — but behind India rather than Pakistan.

Kashmir was, and remains, an Indian problem. But Kargil could be a headache for everyone. The Sino-Afghan-Arab-African contingent, small in numbers though it be, made the invasion of Kargil a global concern, especially with the Government of Pakistan shrieking that it can’t control the mujahideen.

A British friend summed it up: “When the invaders crossed the Line ofControl, they didn’t just transgress a physical boundary, they were also announcing that they had moved beyond the control of Pakistan’s civilian establishment. And that is a danger not just for India, but for all of us.”